The Weekly Round-Up: 05.09.03

It's not easy being a spammer, you know.

You spend your days sending millions of emails to unsuspecting addresses offering a range of tantalising goodies: from little blue performance-enhancement pills that may or may not rhyme with 'Niagara' to chances of making a fortune from deceased Nigerian millionaires, and what do you get in return? Thanks? Ha! Hardly.

Thousands of abusive replies demanding to be unsubscribed and explaining where you can shove your vials of little blue pills. And the bouncebacks? Don't even mention the bouncebacks.

Imagine it: you get home in the evening after a hard day's spamming, and your wife asks you how your day at the office went. Could you admit: "Well Sugar Drawers, I sent millions of unsolicited emails to millions of addresses, many of them owned by children, telling them about frisky teenage girls who like to..." Well, you get the general idea.

What these poor people need is a place to unwind, a place where they can find a shoulder to cry on, a place where everybody knows your name (or at least your email address). In other words a spammers' support group - and hey presto, that's exactly what the poor little tykes have got.

Over 150 spammers have joined the Bulk Club, an online community that offers tips, tools and a comforting community for bulk emailers.

According to Wired magazine, a membership list accidentally left exposed at the Bulk Club's website, reads like a who's who of blacklisted spammers.

Illustrious names nestling in the hallowed ranks, include Damon Decrescenzo, sued by both Microsoft and Amazon in recent months and John Milton, also known as Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a 'former neo-Nazi' who turned to spamming millions of people offering to increase the size of the old chap (at least his career's going in the right direction).

For a measly $20 per month, Bulk Club members receive access to an archive of best-practice spamming tips, spamming software, spamming community forums where you can share your spamming stories and, wait for it: "300,000 FRESH emails per week." Mmm fresh emails...

The club's operator swears the members are dedicated to promoting "responsible" spam. (Which presumably is just vast quantities of unsolicited mail clogging up home and business inboxes, but without the rude words.)

Oh, and all the information detailing the 'misleading' tactics used by some bad apples are simply there to elucidate why they are so improper and not posted as best practice guides.

But there's no rest for the wicked. As soon as the Bulk Club and its members were exposed online the site was hacked and taken offline, anti-spam activists are the prime suspects. The impact to the Club's business was described as being "extreme".

With a recent survey by Yahoo! reporting that three-quarters of spam sufferers would rather clean a blocked toilet than wade through the oomskah festering in their inboxes, the Round-Up suspects readers will have little sympathy with the spammers' plight.

Still, if you're not keen on spammers, you have even less sympathy for virus writers. Especially, disaffected, teenage virus writers who get lynched by the law and are facing their comeuppance.

The author of the Blaster virus is facing a possible prison sentence after the fruits of his labour went on the rampage. We asked you to suggest a suitable punishment.

silicon.com reader Thomas Frame pulls no punches and hits upon an innovative way of funding our schools: "Hang the bastards publicly and charge an entrance fee to be donated to school IT funds."

Jim Dupper doesn't have much sympathy either: "I think locking them up and throwing away the key sounds good, but I would like to see a bit of public flogging and maybe the stocks beforehand!"

However, other readers are a little more sympathetic and with another Blaster suspect captured in Romania on Thursday the furore looks likely to run and run. Join the debate here and let us know what you think.

On Tuesday the Round-Up was playing happily with its new Bluetooth dongle and wishing Orange would get its skates on and deliver its new phone so it had something to connect to when a small rip opened in the space-time continuum and a tattered press release dropped out and landed neatly in its lap.

The press release, no doubt written in days of yore, heralded a revolution in mobile communications technology: "With Panasonic's GD55 mobile phone, you will never have to worry about where to put your mobile again! This phone is so small and light - it will fit easily into pockets or handbags."

The Round-Up grew dewy-eyed with nostalgia as it remembered the breeze block-sized phones it used to heave about in the name of mobile connectivity and glanced at the date on the press release: September 2003.

Surely some mistake, thought the Round-up as it gazed at its venerable, Lilliputian Nokia handset sitting despondently on the table awaiting the arrival of its much swankier replacement. Small form-factors on phones has been the norm for nigh on five years now, hardly something worth trumpeting about. What's the big deal?

But that's not the only revolution the Panasonic GD55 will bring about, oh Lordy no, because the press release had a few more bombshells to drop.

"Forget losing contact with friends..." it chirped. "You can even compose your own ring tone," it added breathlessly.

Which is all ground-breaking stuff, if you happened to be involved in handset design about three years ago. A case of "must try harder" for Panasonic's marketing department?

The rip in the space-time continuum then claimed back its press release which fluttered back into the fourth dimension, but not before it cooed in classic 1960's advertising style: "This phone is perfect for the stylish girl about town..."

Groovy...

Digital blunders continue to pour in from the silicon.com readership after we asked for your technology howlers. Ponder these recent additions to the ever-expanding hall of shame.

Typos are the bane of the careless emailer it seems:

"I'd recently started dating this guy who was extremely touchy about his challenged follicles. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks so I thought I'd send him a text message telling him how I felt.

While checking my outbox a little later I was horrified to find that I'd actually sent 'Missing you baldy' as opposed to 'Missing you badly'. Luckily he saw the funny side of it."

The next blunder involves one of those classic "Gracious, I've clicked 'Reply to All' when I should have clicked 'Reply' moments":

"My son at university is very good and sends his grandparents a regular update email on how he is getting on. His grandparents really appreciate this regular contact, but on one email he also copied in a number of his friends and me on this email. One of his friends replied in graphic detail about all he had been getting up to... and yes, he did a reply all.

"I managed to get to the confused grandparents pretty quickly and explain what had happened before they cut off his allowance..."

There's worse though. Much worse. We were sent one tale of woe so naughty that it couldn't be placed in an email newsletter for the simple reason it would never get through the mail surveillance software that blocks incoming messages containing profanity.

However, you can read it on the website, so if you aren't offended by very rude language follow the link and read the last story. Don't tell us you weren't warned though.

In the meantime, keep your blunders coming in to editorial@silicon.com and check out www.silicon.com/db2.

This week we asked who was to blame for digital blunders - the results raised a few eyebrows in silicon towers.

Until next week, the Round-up will be impatiently fiddling with its dongle and hoping Mr Postman arrives soon with an exciting package...

In the meantime, take a moment to enjoy the best IT stories of the week. Go on, indulge yourself, because you're worth it.

Virus writers: "Hanging is too good for them" BT slashes business broadband costs Indian call centre outsourcing 'set for shakeout' James Bond wins domain name scrap Broadband Britain suffers from urban unavailability In-flight internet deal brings Boeing closer to global coverage Will Linus Torvalds be the next Governor of California?